IAC: U.S. Government Scientists Absentees at AIDS 2008

For the third consecutive International AIDS Conference, few scientists and researchers from the CDC and NIH are taking part, owing to travel restrictions on key agencies.

The CDC, for instance, which has significant partnerships with HIV researchers round the world, has sent fewer than 30 people to this meeting. The agency's HIV/AIDS division has about 600 people, including contractors, visiting scientists, fellows, and its own employees.

Other federal agencies involved in the battle against HIV/AIDS, including the NIH, are similarly constrained.

The limited number of government scientists here has its roots in 2004, when the Bush administration cut the number of U.S. scientists the CDC and the NIH could send to the Bangkok AIDS conference to 20 each.

The previous conference -- in 2002 in Barcelona -- had been attended by 236 U.S. government employees.

The effect of the ban, according to American scientists and others who are present, is to reduce the impact of U.S. research and limit the international effectiveness of the scientists themselves.

"Their absence is a loss," said Scott Hammer, M.D., a leading academic AIDS researcher from Columbia University.

The travel restriction means that the conference is missing the input of "a substantial segment of the individuals who are part of, directing, and funding the research direction, not only in the U.S. but in the world," Dr. Hammer said.

Especially at a conference like this one -- where basic and clinical research is mingled with social science, community activism, and political maneuvering -- their absence means U.S. scientists are losing out, he said.

The American voice is not entirely missing, of course. Academic scientists, representatives of pharmaceutical companies, and community activists are here in strength.

Conference officials say 23% of the more than 22,000 delegates are from the U.S., while the second highest proportion -- 11% -- comes from Mexico.

But the continued restrictions on the federal agencies are "shortchanging" the U.S. in the eyes of the world, said Mark Wainberg, Ph.D., of McGill University in Montreal, a former president of the International AIDS Society, which sponsors this conference.

President Bush has just signed into law a $48 billion five-year package for HIV, TB, and malaria research and treatment, and U.S. scientists should be here "tooting their horns about it" and explaining how they'll be using the money, Dr. Wainberg said.

Rep Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) called the conference "a wonderful place to exchange ideas" and added, "our country is being denied that opportunity."

"It's a terrible policy," she said. "It's not good for our country in terms of its image and role in the world to deny this brainpower to be presented at an international conference."

Lee was one of the key players in the recent lifting of the ban on the entry of HIV-positive people in the U.S. and one of the benefits of that policy change, she said, is that international AIDS can once again be held in the U.S.

Scientists and officials from other countries "are skeptical and somewhat insulted" by the absence of their U.S. counterparts, said Walt Senterfitt, co-chairman of the board of CHAMP, a New York-based advocacy group.

But aside from the image issue, Senterfitt said, there are other issues.

"It impedes the flow of information," he said. "The U.S. is one of the places where epidemiology and behavioral science -- albeit incomplete -- is most advanced and that knowledge is not being diffused."

And, he said, people who attend the AIDS conference come away with a broader outlook.

"We are always profoundly impacted by this meeting," he said, "and it's a shame to deprive the best and the brightest people who work for the federal government of that opportunity."

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